June 15, 2004

As much as 30 percent of homes in the United States and Britain could subscribe to Internet-based phone services in the next three years if major telecommunications companies offer services similar in price and quality to traditional phone connections, according to a new survey.

The findings suggest that the market for low-priced Internet phone services will most likely be dominated by phone companies, cable providers, and possibly local phone… read more

June 14, 2004

June 14, 2004

Physicists have made an atomic force microscope capable of imaging features less than 100 picometers across. The new “higher-harmonic” force microscope uses a single carbon atom as a probe and has a resolution that is at least three times better than that of traditional scanning tunnelling microscopes.

How it works: As the tungsten tip of the probe is made to oscillate at sub-nanometer amplitudes, the interaction between the tip… read more

June 11, 2004

Researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School report that aging brains show significant differences in the behavior of several groups of genes that are important for brain function and that may contribute to the aging process.

One group of the genes plays a role in “synaptic plasticity” — the ability of the brain to make new connections so critical to learning and memory. Another group of… read more

June 11, 2004

A group of climate and ice experts says it has new evidence that Earth is not even halfway through the current warm era.

The evidence comes from ice extracted from Antarctica, composed of thousands of ice layers formed as each year’s snowfall was compressed over time. It reveals many similarities between today’s atmospheric and temperature patterns and those of a prolonged warm interval that took place 430,000 years ago.

June 10, 2004

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have placed an electrocorticographic (ECoG) grid atop patients’ brains to gather motor signals that enable patients to play a computer game using only the signals from their brains.

The breakthrough is a step toward building biomedical devices that can control artificial limbs, some day, for instance, enabling the disabled to move a prosthetic arm or leg by thinking about it.

June 10, 2004

Harvard University researchers have used a photolithography technique to set up interconnects to nanowire devices. The method uses a statistical approach to ensure that a high proportion of the nanowires connects to the electrodes — there is no need to link the two components individually.

“We believe this is the first reported bottom-up assembly and device integration approach that is fully scalable in terms of device density and area… read more

June 10, 2004

Our brains are following the laws of artificial intelligence, researchers have found.

Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientists plotted brain activity on a graph to give a mathematical description of processes that underlie the formation of value judgements. The patterns they saw resembled those made by robots as they learn from experience.